Of course, this idea is neither novel nor hard to grasp. Today and its singular nature happens everyday, which, in part, is the problem. Its regularity often obscures its singular nature. The very fact that there are so many Todays keeps us form realizing the immense value in any particular one.

And then there is the business of living that so often gets in the way. It is very easy to become consumed by every day emotional adventures. Traffic, bosses, schedules, children, waiting … it can be so constant and so immediate that it sucks up all of your attention. You can easily get overwhelmed by all the things you have to do just to get from one day to the next. You work, you handle problems and you put out fires. The business of living often leaves us feeling we have time for little else.

That said, I’d still like to make a plea for celebrating Today. To honor it doesn’t take much time and the benefits are enormous. There are a whole lot of different ways you can live any particular moment. Each one, in and of itself, is both an option and an opportunity.

You can fill it with worries despair or regret. You can spend it nursing old hurts and anger. You can zone out on the couch and binge watch your way into feeling nothing at all. Or you can take a moment, just one or two, and acknowledge the singularity that is Today. Then you can decide to do something special with it.

You can do one small thing that helps you achieve a dream you haven’t thought about in a while. Small acts in pursuit of a distant goal will get you there eventually. You can perform an unexpected act of care for someone you love. You can take a moment to care for yourself by entertaining a pleasant memory or get together with others who appreciate Today as well. Community, fellowship, support in general works wonders for all involved.

Valuing Today is all about taking the time to be grateful for it and doing something worthwhile in it. The context and meaning of your life is established from moment to moment. Don’t get so distracted by the day to day that those moments just slip away.

Forgiveness is a peaceful thing. It neither excuses nor rationalizes. It just frees you from the emotional baggage of other’s wrongs.

Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person acknowledging their wrong. It’s all about how the person who has been wronged decides to feel about it. You forgive someone when you decide to let go of the hurt feelings the offense caused and no longer hold it against the other person.

The beauty of it is the other person isn’t involved. Forgiveness is YOUR POWER to take not theirs to give.

I know it is neither an easy nor instinctual thing to do but it’s a decision that you make about how you want to live. Do you want to hold on to an emotion that is doing you harm or are you going to let it go and be peaceful? It doesn’t mean you let people run over you but it does mean that you no longer volunteer to carry around the hurt caused by something that already occurred.

If you need to say your piece to that person before you let it go that’s cool. But if saying your piece will do more harm than good write it down on a piece of paper then tear it up. Let your feelings out and move on.

TO BE CLEAR, Forgiving isn’t re-living.

It doesn’t mean you keep letting people continue to treat you badly. Forgiving can be the period you put on a relationship that is not good for you. It allows you to move on without carrying any of the baggage they created on your back.

When I was 16, I thought men were disposable. . If one did anything I didn’t like, he was out. I disposed of them, regularly.

By 26, I thought men were indispensible. Wanted marriage and a baby. Not having one made me feel like a failure, fleetingly.

At 36 I had a husband, kids but in misguided effort to make the marriage seamless I lost my voice. My Disposable Man theory came back to bite me. I never learned to work things out with one. I was frustrated, increasingly.

By 46 I was unhappy and unheard. The constant calm I sought required endless one-sided compromise. I was resentful, relentlessly.

Here I am at 56, balanced and calm. I have an “Us Outlook” that doesn’t offend my Need 2 b me. I speak freely, compromise wisely. I am contented, completely.

Shanika asked for my thoughts on self-improvement. When anyone asks me that I invariably start with this. All improvement requires you to embrace what’s wrong with you.

Owning your weaknesses is not always an easy sell. It’s no fun to stare at the least of yourself but …

Do it anyway.

There is no shame in it. In fact, you actually need to get comfortable with it. You can’t fix something you are hiding from. But if you can look at where you’re weak without feeling embarrassed or ashamed then you’ll be able to pick apart what you do so you can figure how to do something else.

I have always thought that the easiest way to make others comfortable owning their weaknesses was to do it myself. So when I wrote my book, My Mother’s Rules back in 2007, I listed as many of my inadequacies that I could put my arms around. This is how it went:

I too much and I talk too fast and if I’m talking to someone who I think talks to slowly I will finish his sentences for them. I tend to look for the worst in everything and the best in every body. I bore quickly and spooked even faster. I have been known to get distracted by my own thoughts. I engage in worry as an art form and let the most mundane things unnerve me. Details can walk right by me and I’ll never even see them. I have no domestic abilities despite my ongoing and deliberate attempt to acquire them. I am a control freak and tend to suffer from all of the fears and power absorption that this trait often inspires.

My Mother’s Rules p. 19

The funny thing is as I look back on it now I realize that the woman I laid bare in my book doesn’t live here anymore. (Further supporting my contention that getting up close and personal with what’s wrong with you is the best way to be a better you.)

Of course, I am not perfect. In fact, I have a whole new list of things that I’m working on. But my new weaknesses are lower order inadequacies. I am better than I was. Which just goes to show

You can be true to yourself without

being glued to yourself.

Here’s what I realized the other day.

The woman who engaged in worry like it was an art form, while not gone, rarely gets a hearing anymore. She’s still there, to be sure, but when I see her coming, I can give the hand, “Bye, Felicia!”

The chick who couldn’t find a detail to save her life has been replaced with a grown woman who can decide to be focused and well-oriented when circumstances require and dog a detail with the best of them.

I can, again when focused, slow my speech and let others get to the end of their own sentences.

Most importantly, the little girl whose peace was in pieces all the time has simply grown out of it. Took her 50 years but she’s gone. I can find peace On the Regular. Not On the Always but On the Regular.

Still can’t cook. The only change there is I don’t care as much anymore. Kids are grown. Eric’s a big boy. I have nothing to prove.

Here’s my list of new weaknesses:

I over-mother sons #5 and #6 and (according to popular local opinion) the dog as well. I want things to work out. I tend to dip in when I should lean back. I understand that I drive my men a little crazy.

I have not seen nor do I know anything about the concept of moderation. I am either at dead stop or over-drive. I am either taking over the world or taking a nap. I am an exhausting woman to live with.

I still talk too much … I can curb that propensity when it’s brought to my attention, but otherwise I am all words all of the time.

Though I no longer engage in worry as an art form I do it far too often. I am pressed, stressed and under duress when there is no need for it at all.

I start things that I don’t finish. My life is a series of sentences that end with an ellipsis.

I am cheap. I can hold on to a dollar so hard it makes George Washington squeal.

So there it is, my first recommendation:

Don’t just put your best foot forward focus on the one dragging behind.

It is on us to step up and step in when we see the potential for abuse.

I’d like to take it one step further though. I think it is on us to step in sooner. Changing the culture requires a comprehensive approach with an audience that’s young. That’s why I am on the board of GoPurple.Org. a non-profit organization that sponsors a program called Bloom365.

Bloom365 is a 7-day, school-based educational program that addresses the epidemic of abusive relationships by targeting its root causes. Abusive relationships can take many forms from bullying, teen dating abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault to workplace harassment and stalking behaviors.

Abusers and their victims often learn the behaviors that lead to those roles early in life. Bloom365 intervenes at the middle school level. It teaches young people about healthy relationships, empathy and boundaries. Meanwhile, we serve as a conduit to safety for those in the school that are already being abused. We hand out cards in the beginning if they want to write a confidential note. These are the things we see:

“I did not realize that if he choked me that I have a good chance of getting killed.”

“I am afraid to go to the mall with my friends because he gets so jealous. What do I do?”

“She keeps stalking me and has threatened to hurt herself if we break up. I did not know I should tell someone about this.”

We also get a glimpse of those who might be struggling with insecurity, depression and the effects of experiencing or being exposed to abuse and get an early opportunity to intervene. They send us things like this:

“You know that empathy thing you keep talking about? Well, I don’t have any. Nobody cares about me and I don’t care about anybody else.”

“I just realized that my first boyfriend coerced me to have sex with him and that is considered rape. I wasn’t ready and did not want to do it, by the said he would find someone else. So, I did it.”

We don’t just educate and go though. Upon conclusion, Bloom365 leaves behind avenues for on-going involvement and continuing student participation in an effort to help create a new generation of adults fluent in the behavioral language of healthy relationships thereby decreasing relational abuse.

I know it sounds like a herculean task, changing the way we see relationships in general. But Bloom365has been evaluated by the Arizona State University Morrison Institute fir Public Policy and is shown to be effective at changing attitudes, increasing knowledge and motivating teens to break the cycle before it starts. What if we implemented something like this countrywide?

We can effect mass cultural change; we’ve done it before. Remember when we jumped all over seat belts and smoking, targeting a generation of young people across the board to change habitual behavior? When I was young there was no seat belt use and smoking was welcomed everywhere restaurants, planes, you name it. Things change when we get serious and start early.

Abuse starts sooner than you think. It begins in the hearts and minds of both the abusers and the abused when they are young and forming ideas about what’s right and wrong. Because peers exert more influence on each other during their adolescent years than at any other time, we should start addressing the situation sooner than we do. In addition to stepping in when it’s about to happen or responding when it’s over what would happen if we made a concerted effort to keep it from happening at all.

More from JudgeLynn

Books

My Mother's Rules" is a humorous, easy to follow self-help guide to managing your emotional life.

Using lessons learned on the bench along with humorous anecdotes from her own 30 year marriage, Judge Lynn Toler wrote "Making Marriage Work" as a logical and simple guide to bringing back the practicality lost in relationships over the years.

About

Judge Lynn Toler became the host of the longest running television court program, "Divorce Court" in 2006. Prior to that, Judge Lynn Toler graduated from Harvard University and The University of Pennsylvania Law School. She began practicing law in Cleveland in 1984. In 1993, at the age of 33, she was elected judge of The Cleveland Heights Municipal Court. Judge Toler volunteered actively in her community creating innovative programs for young offenders such as Woman Talk, a program designed to intensively mentor young, at-risk girls.

Toler also headed the Cleveland Heights Coordinated Community Response to Violence against Women, a countywide initiative for the coordination of community resources to assist women who are victims of violence. She was also active as an advisory board member for Templum House, a battered women's shelter. As a result of her work in the area of domestic violence in 2002, she was awarded The Humanitarian of the Year Award from The Cleveland Domestic Violence Center.

Judge Toler's dedication to ending domestic violence continues. Currently, she is on the Board of GoPurple.org, a non-profit organization that addresses the issue of domestic violence through education. GoPurple.Org sends educators into classrooms teaching students about healthy relationships, signs of potentially abusive relationships, and ways to help both themselves and others who are in abusive situations.

Judge Toler has served as an adjunct professor at Ursuline College, where she created and taught courses on Civil Rights Law, and Women and the Law. She was also a frequent instructor for the Ohio Judicial College, where she helped create and taught continuing judicial education course for other judges.

Judge Toler is the author of three books including her most recent "Making Marriage Work: New Rules for an Old Institution." Her first, "My Mother's Rules: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Emotional Genius" published in 2006, is a humorous memoir in which Judge Lynn recounts a childhood lived in the shadow of mental illness and provides a practical guide to the emotional lessons learned from that experience. And her time on the bench. Her second book, "Put It In Writing," coauthored with Deborah Hutchison, was published in September, 2009. It gives readers concrete, conflict-free solutions to the difficult situations that arise between family and friends.

Judge Toler has written for a variety of magazines including Divorce Magazine published through out the United States and Canada. In 2009, Judge Toler was given The Voice of Freedom Award by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joining former honorees Colin Powell and Vice President Al Gore, in ringing the Liberty Bell on Martin Luther King Day.

Currently, Judge Toler appears regularly as a guest expert on WeTV's Marriage Bootcamp. Born on October 25, 1959, she has been married to Eric Mumford since April, 1989. She has two sons and four stepsons.

Connect with Judge Lynn

January 25, 2016 “Silly has Value” Today is a singularity. There will be other days. For most, but not all of us, there will be a tomorrow. But Today, this particular twenty-four hours is a one-time thing. Once it’s gone you cannot get it back. Of course, this idea is neither novel nor hard to […]

January 30, 2016 Forgiveness Forgiveness is a peaceful thing. It neither excuses nor rationalizes. It just frees you from the emotional baggage of other’s wrongs. Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person acknowledging their wrong. It’s all about how the person who has been wronged decides to feel about it. You forgive someone […]

February 1, 2016 The Disposable Man Theory When I was 16, I thought men were disposable. . If one did anything I didn’t like, he was out. I disposed of them, regularly. By 26, I thought men were indispensible. Wanted marriage and a baby. Not having one made me feel like a failure, fleetingly. […]

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY SO I POST THOSE WORDS HERE. NO PARTICULAR THEME OR REASON MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT RELATED TO ONE ANOTHER. THEY ARE ALL DATED AND TITLED THOUGH SO YOU CAN TELL THEM APART. ************** February 8, 2016 Better Than Yesterday Part I “She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” […]

************************************** It’s On Us Sooner Than We Think It IS on us, just like Joe Biden said. ItIsOnUs.org. It is on us to step up and step in when we see the potential for abuse. I’d like to take it one step further though. I think it is on us to step […]